Is Domain Age Important?

I’ve seen many articles written about the importance of domain age for search engine ranking. While some people have made careful studies about domain age, I have not but I can offer my opinion from experience and common sense.

The only possible advantage to an older domain name is that Google would believe that there is some possible value to the website. However, this does not make any sense. Any website “spammer” could easily buy an older domain name or register a domain name for several years. Consequently, registering a new domain name for 10 years probably has no value because anyone trying to get in the top Google results without providing good content would be doing that.

I have registered many new domain names, set up a website, wrote a lot of good content and found the website in the top ten Google results within days. This shows me that a new domain name is not necessarily at a disadvantage.

Recently, I purchased an older domain name because it’s a short domain name that’s really good for branding. I haven’t yet decided what to do with it, but I also like it as a one-page website joke. At the price I paid for it, it’s an expensive joke. My new, old domain name with a one-page, one sentence joke was at the top Google search results instantly. This seems to contradict what I wrote above.

If I don’t think the age of a domain name has anything to do with getting top Google results, then why did my new, old domain name rank so fast in the top Google search results? The reason was not the age of the domain name.

The domain name belonged to a medium-size company (approximately 2,000 employees) that did lot of national advertising and recently went out of business. The company did not renew their domain name and it was sold at auction with a lot of bidders trying to buy the name. For some crazy reason, I seriously outbid everyone just because I liked it.

So what was the reason? The reason that the domain name does so well, is because the company was a national company doing a lot of advertising and there were a lot of links to the domain name from lots of other websites including newspaper sites, TV news sites, etc.

I believe that the age of the domain name is of no direct value but an older name which has been around a while may have lots of links pointing to it. If you get an older domain name which has no valuable links pointing to it, there should be no additional benefit over a brand-new domain name.

On the other hand, loads of new links can be obtained for a brand-new domain name with the proper publicity. A well-written press release about something new or interesting can help a lot. Of course, a national advertising campaign will also help to get top Google search results.

If what you’re doing isn’t newsworthy or have viral interest, focus on really good and interesting content for top Google results.